Welcome to my NARRATIVE 2 WEBSITE. This website, in a way, is a continuation of the website I created last year called my NARRATIVE WEBSITE. The IDEA behind the two projects is very similar. The original website was based around the idea of creating an interesting story but with a catch. That narrative could not contain any sort of dialogue. However this years challenge was to change that around completely. As a senior at Freestyle Academy, I was given the task of creating an engaging, interesting, and thoughtful short story involving a considerable amount of dialogue to improve the narrative's ability to tell a story. So this year, I wrote the short comedy "Grand Theft Grandma" for my English assignment.



        Another fun and experimental project we were assigned was to make a quick commercial to promote the sales of our stories. For this project, we were given the opportunity to team up with a partner and brainstorm the style we would use while creating this short commerical in Adobe After Effects.

        My partner, Karna Chelluri, and I, Max Weber, came to the conclusion that we would use a silly way to portray the comedic and outlandish aspects of my story in our commerical. We wen't about this by using low quality visuals, intense sound effects, and jokes revolving around the car fanatic communities. This commericial was a lot of fun to make and was a good learning experience.

        "Falling Sideways"

        My Surrealism Project is based off of a combination of a few extraordinarily weird dreams. I took three different dreams and mashed them together into the most interesting form that I could imagine. I also chose to take the most memorable part of each dream, hoping to create a memorable piece as a whole.

        The first dream, or piece, of the image is about falling sideways. I dreamt that I was sucked through a window and that I began flying through the air. However, it wasn’t the kind of flying you’d expect in a dream. The motion felt forced and gave the sensation of falling. I tried to capture this feeling by having my legs and the extra limbs in the image looks as if they were a combined body falling sideways. I took an image of my own lower body looking down upon my legs, and a friend’s arms. I cut out the pieces in Adobe Photoshop and arranged them in a way where the limbs fit together like a single being. Then I took a landscape HDR photograph of a long street in my neighborhood. By doing this, I created two alternating angles of perspective, creating the feeling of falling sideways.

        The second dream involved a transformation. The world was tinted blue in this dream, especially my own body. I began to change texture as well. In this dream, my body changed from a fleshy texture to a smooth and metallic glaze. I used a solarization filter in Photoshop to create this texture and tint on the left arm in the image, bringing dream into part of the project.

        The third dream involved a lot of movement. I was constantly running from an unknown object or being in this dream. My motion was nonstop and, at a point, became faster than my head could handle. This made my own movements blur in the dream, almost like watching a superhero run. I created this final effect through a motion blur filter in photoshop, and completed unifying all three dreams into one project.

        Grand Theft Grandma is a hilariously thrilling story that tells the tale of a dangerous old lady. Iris Tsunemori, a spunky woman with a great sense of style and expensive taste, plots to fix the overwhelming issue of her boredom while trapped in the Alabama State Senior Center. This short story takes place in one of the most bland and boring settings one could think of, but Iris manages to spice things up with daring actions, stealth, and criminal activity. Iris is a bold, intense, and exciting character.

        The book cover reflects Iris’ story through its elegant design and intensity. Although Iris Tsunemori can be rough on the edges, she is surprisingly slick and cunning when she manages to put her mind to it. I tried to represent this aspect of my character through the predominantly black and white color scheme used on the book cover. The black and white aspect of the book cover gives the book a more mature feeling at first glance. The first glance aspect is also another huge aspect of my design. Much like Iris herself, the book cover is highly deceiving at first. A lesson to be learned from the story is that appearances are in no way related to what lies inside. I managed to recreate this idea with my book cover by making it seem innocent, mature, and elegant, much like the general appearance of Iris. But on the inside, both are exciting, hilarious, and incredible. Another major aspect of the book cover involved multiple close up images of fire. I used texture filters and transparencies, through the use of Adobe Photoshop, to give the images of fire a rough and chalky feeling. The fire represents Iris Tsunemori’s inner intensity. It displays her bravery, will to take risks, and hot headedness. The roughness of the book cover represents her tough personality. At points, she is known to be bold, abrupt, and at points, a pain.

        The book cover itself is meant to emulate the surprising character that I have created in Grand Theft Grandma. Each aspect of both Iris and my book cover was carefully thought out and retains great amounts of detail.

        The NARRATIVE 2 UNIT was probably one of my favorite units during my time here at Freestyle Academy. We explored new forms of story telling, new forms of visual media, and new conceptual art forms. We discovered new ways to produce amazing and creative works through Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. And we took advantage of the ability to create with other people rather than being confined by the ideas in our own heads.

        This project was very fun in the creative aspect. I explored new routes in art that I have never though of before. I expanded my writing abilities and comedic skills. I discovered how to create and edit commercials in a completely new application. We all gathered an immense amount of knowledge and skill from this unit as a whole. This project really stretched out boundaries and opened up our minds to new ideas and ways of thinking.